Illawarra elections are a Labor litmus test

The Wollongong and Shellharbour Council elections on September 3 will provide an interesting gauge of Labor's ability to bounce back after its battering in the March state election.

The outcome could determine future battlelines for political parties in the Illawarra, with statewide implications.

With less than three months left to convince voters, Labor and the Liberals still do not have a prominent lord mayoral candidate between them.

Details of their respective strategies are beginning to emerge though.

Labor was considering widening participation in the pre-selection of candidates, opening it up to Labor voters who are not local branch members.

There was also talk of running a low key campaign to reconnect with the community, but these options appear to have been rejected by those wielding power in Wollongong.

The credibility of the ALP plummeted as full details of the 2008 inquiry by the state's Independent Commission Against Corruption into Wollongong Council emerged.

ALP councillors, along with council officers and prominent developers were called on to provide evidence on how development approvals were pushed through against planning guidelines, using political and in some cases sexual persuasion.

One former ALP councillor has been sent to jail, while two others were cleared of charges.

A fourth is yet to have his matter resolved.

All four were expelled from the party.

With the ICAC saga still playing out, ALP figures such as former state MP Colin Markham are calling publicly for Labor to run a low profile campaign with candidates free of political baggage.

"The number of people who are putting their hand up for lord mayor, and some of the bogies that those people carry, I just think the people of Wollongong aren't that stupid to be fooled by some of those people and the stories that they're telling about how they'll turn Wollongong around," Mr Markham said this week.

A number of past Labor councillors, including Vicki King, David Brown and Janice Kershaw have indicated their ambitions to return to their former posts, or become lord mayor.

Further complicating matters, former Wollongong Council general manager Rod Oxley is running for mayor on a pro-business platform.

Many still hold Mr Oxley personally responsible for much of what went wrong at the council.

The ICAC found he turned a blind eye to corruption, but did not recommend criminal charges be laid.

Running against these familiar faces is a coalition of independents loosely aligned to the Greens, who will campaign for fresh faces and a fresh start based on community input.

This group could be led by former Federal Greens MP Michael Organ, who has announced his intention to run for mayor as an independent.

Their mayoral candidate could also be the Reverend Gordon Bradbery, the man who turned Noreen Hay's safe Labor seat of Wollongong into one of the most marginal in NSW.

Whoever they choose, the Greens party is looking at ways to maximise the distribution of preferences between a diaspora of left leaning groups.

Far less is known about the type of campaign the Liberal Party will run.

The party will clearly be out to utilise the goodwill still lingering after the state election.

The Liberals come from a position of strength after picking up state seats in the Illawarra they have never held before.

Two names put forward as mayor candidates, John Dorahy and Michelle Blicavs, both ran strong campaigns in the March, but not strong enough to defeat Labor.

Further down the coast at Shellharbour, the Liberals may openly run council candidates where it would have been unthinkable to do so just a few years ago.

Shellharbour will no longer have a directly elected mayor and the number of councillors has been cut nearly in half, in a further sign of Labor's waning influence in its former heartland.

Another Labor shellacking would set the party's recovery back even further after their mauling in March, in what should be a heartland.

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